Contemplations: What’s in a name? Not much and everything

A few years ago, my wife gave birth to our first son, and we named him Henrik. When said quickly out loud, it sounds like Henry, the English pronunciation, and when read in print can appear to be Heinrich, the German pronunciation.

For the most part, we don’t correct people: Henry, Henrik and Heinrich are all given names derived from old German words that mean something like “ruler of the house.” One nurse at the hospital where our son was born called him “ahn-REEK,” a strange amalgamation of the French (Henri) and Spanish (Enrique) versions of the name.

My wife and I chose the name since it’s a combination of the two of us: Henry is a family name on my side, and Mary’s family is of Scandinavian descent where the name is pronounced Henrik. Curiously, the family version of the name was once-upon-a-time Heinrich, since my mom’s side of the family is all German.

If my son ever travels to Norway, everyone will say Henrik with no issue, but if he ventures southward to France or Italy, no doubt he will be called Henri or Enrico, and there’s a certain beauty in that. As Henrik travels around Europe and sees medieval stained-glass windows of Saint Henricus, he will rightly say, “Hey, that’s my name!” The sounds get shifted around a little bit as one crosses borders, but there’s no real translating that has to be done because the name remains. His name doesn’t change as he goes from place to place – he remains the same person, even though he is called by a different sound.

Names are important, not because of how they sound, or even necessarily what they mean. (I assure you, we won’t be telling a toddler or a teenage son that his name means “ruler of the house.”) But rather, the greater importance of a name is the person or the thing that the name signifies.

When the congregation I pastor was first founded in 1916, it was called “Evangelische Lutherische Heliege Johannis Gemeinde.” Without a doubt, when the German Lutheran settlers came to the Big Horn Basin from Russia, this was a weird name to the English-speaking population of Wyoming. Children named Heinrich would probably prefer to be called Henry so that their names didn’t stick out so much (hence, my mother’s family having more Henrys than Heinrichs, despite being of German descent). 

Not long after our church was founded, the United States entered into the First World War, speeding up the social pressures to transition from German to English. Soon after our founding, our historical documents appear in both German and English, and today you’d be hard pressed to find a member who could read the old German church records. Thus, the name had to change. Rather, the way we said the name had to change – the Church itself would remain the same.

The first attempt was a literal translation from the German, and so many of our legal documents read, Evangelical Lutheran Saint John’s Congregation. That last word, Gemeinde, is a curious one as it can mean community or congregation or church. By 1922, the English version of our name read The Evangelical Lutheran St. John’s Church-U.A.C. That last little bit, U.A.C., meant Unaltered Augsburg Confession and was added to distinguish our congregation from more liberal strains of Lutheranism in the United States. Adding U.A.C. didn’t change our name, as much as it clarified and restated the identity we’d had all along. 

Again, this is no different than how we express our human names. Depending on the context, I may sign a letter Jacob or Pastor Benson. When I introduce myself to someone, I may clarify my name by saying, “I’m the pastor at Saint John’s,” or “My dad is Landis Benson from Worland,” depending on what they’re trying to learn about me.

Soon after the Second World War, the church’s name was tightened up to sound more English instead of German-quickly-translated-into-English. But, in truth, our name hasn’t changed at all. We are now Saint John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. We are still U.A.C., that is, we still hold to the ancient and apostolic teachings of Christianity, even though we don’t put that on our letterhead anymore. 

We are a Church (Gemeinde, or a congregation, or a community) which means nothing else than that we are a gathering of people with shared beliefs, practices and goals. We are Lutheran (Lutherische), which means nothing else than that we are inheritors of the 16th Century Reformation in Germany, which restated that truth is drawn only from the Holy Scriptures and not from the traditions of man. We are Evangelical (Evangelische), which means nothing else than that we are Gospel-centered. We are of Saint John (Heliege Johannis), which doesn’t mean that we worship John but that we, along with the entire church, share our beliefs with John. 

We hold up John, in particular, as the glorious preacher that he was, paying special attention to his Gospel (signified by a soaring eagle) and the legacy he left us in the care of Jesus’ mother (John 19:26-27), his gentle letters to the church and the mysterious revelation contained in the book by the same name.

So whether we’re called St. John’s or the Lutheran Church in Lovell, or Evangelische Lutherische Heliege Johannis Gemeinde, we’re the same thing. We’re here to know nothing but the words of the Old and New Testament, and to administer the Holy Sacraments according to the institution of Christ.

And whether you call my son Henrik, or Henry or Heinrich … he’s still a cute kid. What’s in a name? Not much. And everything.